The US Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up a case testing
whether a century-long ban on political contributions to candidates
from corporations violates corporations freedom of speech.

The action came without comment by the justices.

At issue in the case was a section of federal election law that
permits contributions of up to $2,500 from individuals,
partnerships, and limited liability companies. But campaign-finance
laws ban the same amount when coming from a corporate treasury.

The ban on corporate contributions to candidates has been in
effect since 1907.

The case, Danielczyk v. United States (12-579), arose in the wake
of the high courts controversial 2010 decision in Citizens United v.
Federal Election Commission.

In the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court ruled that
corporations are entitled under the First Amendment to spend
unlimited corporate money when making independent political
expenditures during election season. The justices struck down a ban
on such expenditures, saying that corporations enjoy free-speech
rights just as individuals do.

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Critics say the ruling opened the floodgates to independent
expenditures by advocacy groups organized as corporations, drowning
federal elections in massive amounts of corporate money that has
funded a blitz of independent political advertisements.

In Danielczyk v. US, lawyers had sought to extend the Citizens
United decision to lift a ban on corporate contributions to
candidates.

The issue arose in a case filed against two corporate officers
who allegedly sought to channel funds from their company to support
Hillary Rodham Clinton during both her reelection campaign in the
Senate and her unsuccessful run for the Democratic presidential
nomination in 2008.

William Danielczyk and Eugene Biagi were officers of Galen
Capital Group and Galen Capital Corp., both of Nevada. According to
briefs in the case, the men hosted fundraisers for Mrs. Clinton in
2006 and 2007.

Mr. Danielczyk asked his employees to attend the fundraisers and
assured them that they would be reimbursed for the amounts they
contributed to the Clinton campaign, according to the indictment. …

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